A key aspect of the Search Merchandising feature is the use of search configuration files. These are the XML files that represent sets of ATG Search query rules that specify how to sort the search results and to exclude certain results entirely, based on terms in the search query and values of the properties of the returned items. For example, a search configuration might specify that less expensive items should be displayed first, and that if the query contains the word “bargain”, all items whose price is above $100.00 should be excluded from the results.
The rules that make up the search configurations are created in ATG Merchandising, and stored as repository items in the RefinementRepository. When the product catalog is deployed from the ATG Merchandising environment to the target site, the RefinementRepository is deployed as well.
When Search Administration initiates indexing of the product catalog, it also invokes the /atg/commerce/search/config/CatalogRankConfigAdapter component. This component is a customization adapter that manages the process of generating the search configuration files and submitting them to ATG Search.
To generate the search configuration files, CatalogRankConfigAdapter invokes the /atg/search/repository/SearchConfigurationXMLGenerator component (of class atg.repository.search.indexing.config.SearchConfigurationXMLGenerator). This component is responsible for transforming the repository items into the XML files that represent rule sets in ATG Search. SearchConfigurationXMLGenerator calls various other components that parse the rules in the RefinementRepository and generate XML representations of those rules.
